Japan¡¯s largest opposition party wants to use the Bank of Japan¡¯s exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to help cover the cost of making high school education free as part of the normalization of monetary policy, according to a party official.
¡°It¡¯s abnormal that a central bank is holding risky assets with a book value of ?37 trillion ($244 billion),¡± the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP)¡¯s finance chief Takeshi Shina said in an interview on Tuesday. ¡°Including the latent profits, the assets are about double that value, and it¡¯s a problem that those profits aren¡¯t being returned to the public.¡±
Shina said he hoped to join forces with other smaller opposition parties to submit a bill to parliament this year after the annual budget is passed. He said the timing was right given increased interest in the fate of the ETFs.
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